This edited article about espionage around the Spanish Armada originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 706 published on 26 July 1975.

The Spanish Armada (top) preoccuppied Elizabeth’s spymaster general, Sir Francis Walsingham (centre), but of all Britain’s spies, Christopher Marlowe, who was killed in a Deptford tavern (bottom), was the greatest loss. Pictures by Eric Parker

Who defeated the Spanish Armada? “Sir Francis Drake,” would be the universal answering chorus.

But as anyone who lived in the days of Good Queen Bess would have told you, Drake was only half the answer. Behind him lurked another Sir Francis – a knight named Walsingham, Britain’s super-spy of the sixteenth century.

He was tall, slender, dark and mysterious, like an Italian cavalier. His tread was soft and he spoke only when it was necessary, but his eyes were everywhere. “He is my Moor,” laughed Queen Elizabeth, likening him to a stealthy Arab servant, but she knew his value to her and to her realm.

Walsingham’s official title was Secretary of State, an office he gained after many years in Europe as diplomat and ambassador. At home, as England’s spy-master, he was never short of enemies, for these were the times when England and Spain were perpetually in an ugly mood with each other.

With war always on the cards, Walsingham concentrated his agents in Spain. The star among them was Antony Standen who, using the name of Pompeo Pelligrini, and his own great charm, ingratiated himself with the courtiers of Spain’s King Philip in Madrid.

Thus it was that three years before the mighty Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel to invade England, Standen and his fellow spies were reporting to Walsingham that the Spaniards were assembling a great fleet in Cadiz harbour, and their plan was to use it to attack England.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The famous World War Two spy, Violette Szabo, was trapped by an advance guard of the German army

The cinema and the spy thriller have given us a highly coloured picture of the secret agent at work. Armed with a veritable arsenal of fancy equipment, ranging from cameras in cigarette lighters to seemingly innocuous items which turn out to be something capable of blowing up a building, the secret agent of fiction wanders around the world, gaily taking everything in his stride. The truth is something rather different.

The secret agent, which is really a more polite term for a spy, has been with us for a long, long time, and for most of that time his work has been lonely and boring. But, of course, it was still not without its dangers, as we will show you in this new series.

Espionage, in war and in peace, is almost as old as man himself. Certainly it began much earlier than the times of the Old Testament in which it is recorded that Moses sent 12 spies into the land of Canaan. Four thousand years ago, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had a highly sophisticated espionage network in its conquered territories. And espionage has never lacked for its practitioners at any time in history, even though, when caught, the spy can always be certain of two things – that he will be disowned by his masters and that he will be imprisoned or executed.

Probably the most illustrious of all ancient spies was Mithridates, who became king of Pontus in Asia Minor when he was, only 11 years old. Later, he fled from his tempestuous mother and in his wanderings he was said to have learned 25 languages and made a special study of poisons. These attributes Mithridates turned to good account as a spy, a career he pursued while disguised as a caravan boy. He soon learned so much about the strength of tribes in Asia Minor that he was able to vanquish his mother and get back his throne, where he ruled as one of the greatest tyrants of all time.

The ancient Romans had a highly developed espionage service, although their methods were sometimes strangely crude. When a Roman delegation went to the camp of Syphax, king of Numidia, to arrange a peace treaty, the whole delegation were high ranking military spies. Only their leader, Lelius, wore uniform; all the rest were disguised as slaves.

To get information about the strength of the Numidian army, Lelius simply contrived to make one of the Roman horses break away from the delegation’s camp. The slaves then chased the animal through the Numidian army lines, making careful mental note of all they saw.

But one day, a Numidian army officer stopped one of the Roman “slaves” and declared that he had seen him before, in an officers’ training school in Greece, and that he was sure the slave was in fact a Roman officer.

At this, Lelius stepped forward and viciously slashed the “slave” with his horsewhip. The Numidian officer knew that, according to Roman law, it was forbidden under pain of death to strike a Roman officer. What would the “slave” do? Time and time again, Lelius lashed the man until, like a cringing animal, the “slave” crept away. The Numidian was then satisfied: the man could not be an officer or Lelius would never have struck him.

As old as the spy’s profession is his bag of tricks, repeated and permutated down all the centuries, but never losing its fascination. In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, spies disguised as priests walked out of Paris while it was under siege and found their way unmolested into the German lines. In the war between France and Austria in 1813, cryptic writing, which aims at disguising important information with harmless phrases, was widely used. Thus, “Your brother has recovered from his illness and is now in good health” meant, “The Austrian army is mobilised and ready to march.”

One of the papers found in the Austrian army headquarters after that war was the following “business” letter written by a spy from Trieste. Although the “business” seems harmless, the recipient’s knowledge of what the code meant gave the letter a new and vital significance:

“Dear Sir,

“I hope that you are already in receipt of my last letter. I arrived at 5 a.m. today in Trieste to look for the goods that you are particularly anxious to obtain here.

“I have secured the following.

1 cwt, of cinnamon (a fortress)

2 cases of lemons, average size (guns)

60 ditto, smaller size

“These are being stored meantime not far from the shore.

Within the next few days you may expect to receive the following:

4 cases of bitter oranges (earthworks)

2 casks of eels (magazines)

400 sacks of rice (hundredweights of powder)

450 sacks of almonds (light infantry)

1 small cask of figs (brigadier)

1 small cask of pure oil (lieutenant-general)

“For all these articles I have paid a deposit of 1,700 lire (infantry), debiting the amount to your account. Trusting this meets with your entire satisfaction and may prove extremely profitable to you . . .”

Sending such information by post was nothing new. In ancient times, when the “post” was simply a slave courier, the Persians inscribed their secret messages on clay tablets, then covered the tablets with wax, so that the words could not be seen. Then, if the courier was caught, he appeared to be carrying only a blank tablet.

Another favourite spy trick, used as late as the Second World War, was to insert cipher information in the personal advertisement columns of newspapers. When the Germans bombed Paris in the First World War, for instance, their intelligence service in Switzerland eagerly scanned the columns of a well-known French newspaper for days afterwards, until they saw an advertisement that read something like:

“19-22. Bien arrivee avec nos trois amis, mere malade. 3,160.”

The advertisement, placed by a spy, meant:

“Nineteenth district of Paris, Square No. 22 on the military map, bomb hit, three victims, tremendous effect on the population. Sent by agent number 3,160.”

On the French and Belgian battlefields in the First World War, windmills were a favourite means of communication for spies. Once, a Russian spy decided to make use of a windmill just in front of the Russian lines.

For an hour he pleaded with the miller and his wife, with a bribe of fifty roubles, to help the Allied cause by turning the arms of the windmill in a clockwise direction as a signal to the Russians if the Germans should arrive.

When the miller adamantly refused to have anything to do with such an idea, the spy stripped three of the sails, bound the miller’s wife hand and foot; then tied the helpless miller to the remaining sail of the windmill, which he turned upwards.

The spy’s plan, of course, was that if the Germans did arrive they would certainly release the miller by bringing him down to earth. As soon as they did that, one of the stripped sails would go upwards, signalling to the Russians that they were there. That, in fact, was exactly what did happen. As soon as the Germans made to release the miller, the Russians raked the mill with artillery fire, wiping out the enemy.

Today, with most of the world in an uneasy state of peace, there is still plenty of work for spies. The peacetime spy is an industrial spy, whose job is to steal one company’s secrets and sell them to others – or to use them for himself. During the years of the industrial revolution a British ironmaster and industrial spy named Foley played the part of a wandering minstrel by tramping from town to town in Europe with his violin. His real aim was to find out how the Continental method of treating iron and producing steel worked, for it was considered superior to the British method. Returning to England with his secret, “Fiddler” Foley developed his factory at Stourbridge in Worcestershire and became a millionaire.

“Bugs”, or listening devices, are the chief tools of the modern industrial spy. A bug invented by Emanuel Mittleman, of New York, can be planted in the base of the victim’s telephone, and the spy can then eavesdrop from anywhere.

What happens is that the spy dials the number of the bugged telephone and the moment before the telephone rings he blows a single special note with a tiny mouth organ that comes with the bug. The mouth organ note activates the microphone in the base of the telephone at the other end. Two things then happen – the telephone does not ring and the spy is able to hear every word in the room, even though the bugged telephone is still on the hook.

Followers of James Bond and other modern espionage heroes know how important is the miniature camera in the spy’s toolkit. The one most used is, strange to say, one that is on sale to the public – the German Minox miniature camera.

The Minox is only three inches long by an inch wide and weighs only four ounces when fully loaded. It can take sharp pictures down to a range of eight-inches, and with 36 pictures on a single film, it is the perfect instrument for photographing the enemy’s secret documents at close range.

The twelve spies who went into the land of Canaan for Moses had only their eyes with which to record information. Three and a half thousand years later the tools are different – but the basic job is still the same.

This edited article about Somerset originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

The Battle of Sedgemoor by Ron Embleton

Somerset, as the old song says, is where the cider apples grow. It is also a county of rolling hills, famous towns, great men, romantic legends and vital developments in our island story.

You can go back a long, long way in British history, in fact, and still find that men were busy in Somerset. Years before Julius Caesar made his inquisitive expedition to our hostile shores in Kent, the early Celts had developed a high level of culture, centred upon Glastonbury. In that same town, centuries later, Dunstan, probably the first of Britain’s chief ministers, founded the Abbey, the ruins of which still stand today.

Glastonbury, too, is one of the places where King Arthur was said to have been buried, and in the reign of Richard I, an excavating team claimed to have discovered his bones there.

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This edited article about  long distance running originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Pheidippides was the original long distance runner with the news of the Greek victory over the Persians at Marathon, by Alberto Salinas

The art of long distance running is not only a matter of simple endurance. It is also a question of the runner having an economical running style, and the ability to judge pace. Nurmi, the Finnish athlete, who always ran with effortless ease, exemplified this style. His feats, however, were part of a sporting event in which he had the crowds to spur him on. The solitary long distance runner, out to create some personal record, has no such aids to sustain him as he runs along his lonely route.

Loneliness, though, has never seemed to be a problem for the long distance runner, who, for centuries, has been happily travelling along deserted routes with only his thoughts for company. The best runners in the Middle Ages, were the ones who travelled alone, and were generally found among the couriers of the Turkish sultans, who often ran from Constantinople to Adrianople and back, a distance of about 220 miles (352 km), in two days and nights.

Today, the record for the greatest non-stop run belongs to Jared R. Beads, who at the age of 41, covered a distance of 121 miles, 440 yards (195,132 km) in 22 hours, 27 minutes. More spectacular though, in its way, was the feat of the Norwegian, Mensen Ehrnst, who, in 1936, ran from Istanbul to Calcutta and back in 59 days, averaging 92.4 miles (151,6 km) per day. Considering the endless miles of dusty, unmade roads he had to cover, mostly in sweltering heat, it was an incredible feat, which still stands as a monument to man’s endurance.

This edited article about airmail in wartime originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

French balloonists defied the Prussian blockade and delivered airmail during the Siege of Paris by Pat Nicolle

Parisians besieged in their city for 142 days by the Prussians from 1870 to 1871 were not denied contact with the outside world. They enjoyed the first airmail in the history of flight – by balloon.

The first flight out of Paris was made by Jules Durouf, a professional balloonist. He took off with his leaky old balloon, Le Neptune, at 11 a.m. on 23rd September, 1870, and sailed high over the Prussain lines at 1,800 metres. With him he carried mail from people in the besieged city to their friends outside.

Shells whined through the air around him when the Prussians opened fire with a special mobile gun built by the arms firm of Krupp. This was the first known anti-aircraft gun in history.

The shells missed Durouf, who replied by showering the Prussians with visiting cards that advertised his services as a balloonist.

A few letters had earlier been lifted out of the French fortress town of Metz, which was besieged in 1870. But these went by unmanned balloon and most were shot down by German sharpshooters.

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This edited article about Waterloo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

The Duke of Wellington astride his horse, ‘Copenhagen’, shouts encouragement to his troops at the Battle of Waterloo, by Peter Jackson

Everyone assumed that Napoleon, the Imperial Eagle, was safely caged on the island of Elba. But the eagle would shortly leave its prison to wave its warlike wings over France and destroy a precarious peace.

At long last it seemed that the triumphant career of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Great Imperial Eagle of France, was at an end. After the crushing reverses of the French Army, Napoleon had abdicated and retired to Elba, which his victorious enemies had given him to govern. After close on twenty-five years of storm and tumult. Europe was once more at peace. It was a peace, however, which was not to last for very long.

For an active and proud man like Napoleon, the lonely and boring life he had been condemned to live on that little Mediterranean island, was an insufferable one. Fretting and fuming in his exile, he finally decided to make one last try for power. He had heard that the new King of France, Louis XVIII, was not a man whom France liked. He knew, too, that his own soldiers still loved and admired him, and he remembered with emotion how the men of his own Imperial Guard had wept when he had bade them farewell. With such soldiers as these, surely he could win France back again.

In the February of 1815, he left Elba and made his way to Paris, collecting troops to his standard on the way. On arriving in Paris, he was carried up the grand staircase of the Tuileries on the shoulders of his officers. From that moment until the middle of June, he worked tirelessly to produce a new army to take into the field against the Allies, who had declared him an outlaw, five days after he had entered Paris.

The man chosen to save Europe from Napoleon was his old enemy. Wellington, who had driven the French out of Spain in 1813. Supported by Austria, Russia, and the Prussian army under Blucher, he made a formidable enemy who was already threatening France’s north-eastern frontiers along the Belgian border. Realising that he was greatly outnumbered, Napoleon decided to try and drive a swift wedge between the British and Prussian forces, which would force them both back to their respective lines of communication, where he would crush each army separately.

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This edited article about County Down originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

The Irish Brigade of the French army distinguished itself when fighting the hated English at the Battle of Fontenoy by Severino Baraldi

Across the battlefield at Fontenoy in Belgium in 1745, the English and French armies faced each other in silence. Then, with a great cheer, the English charged, scattering the French before them.

Victory seemed certain until, suddenly, a line of determined Irishmen refused to budge before the triumphant English Guards.

“Curse the Ulstermen and their freedom-loving,” growled the Duke of Cumberland as he watched his men driven back from the French lines to defeat.

Why did the Irish fight so stubbornly against the English on that Belgian battlefield? The answer is a simple one: for the same reason they have fought in battles all over the world – for freedom.

They fought at Fontenoy because the English had tried to suppress the Irish wool industry.

A few years before, King George III had raged that it was only the courage of the Ulstermen who fought with them that enabled the Americans to win their independence.

“Our Declaration of Independence is sacredly preserved in the handwriting of Ulstermen,” commented a United States congressman later.

When the English proposed establishing a parliament to govern both Northern and Southern Ireland, Ulstermen immediately prepared to fight, but instead, the English quickly agreed that Ulster should have its own parliament.

Ulstermen are the stubborn, independent people who live in Northern Ireland, among whose counties is County Down.

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This edited article about Inverness District originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald by Pat Nicolle

Stretching across Scotland from the Atlantic Ocean to the Moray Firth, dotted with glens, peppered with lochs, a wild, remote slice of country constitutes the area that was, until recently, Inverness-shire, Scotland’s largest county.

With the changing of the county boundaries it became on 16th May this year, part of the Highland Region. Within this is Inverness District, which is smaller than the former county.

However, the name of Inverness-shire will live on in local lore for it captures the spirit of the rugged Scottish Highlands. Here Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis (4,406 ft.; 1,343 metres) fingers a cold, misty sky. Here, too, one of the most romantic stories and one of the most tragic battles in our history were enacted.

The story is Bonnie Prince Charlie’s and the battle was the Battle of Culloden.

Brought up in Rome at the court of his exiled father (James, The Old Pretender), the young “Bonnie” Prince Charles determined to reclaim the English throne from George II of Hanover for his own House of Stuart.

Thus decided, Prince Charles landed on the rugged coast of Inverness-shire at Loch-nan-Uamh in July 1745. With him was a small band of his followers, called Jacobites. Many of the clans were too busy with their own quarrels to pay much attention to the handsome Prince from overseas. But, at length, they chose a day to meet and decide whether or not to side with him.

The day selected was August 19, 1745. At the appointed time of eleven o’clock in the morning the Prince rode to Glenfinnan, near Loch Shiel, in Inverness-shire, to meet the loyal clansmen. But the immediate question was, would they come? Would they settle their own feuds in time?

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This edited article about Robert Clive originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

Clive of India

The boy who was to grow up to become the chief founder of Great Britain’s Indian Empire, was a most unpopular pupil with his schoolteachers in Shropshire where he was born in 1725. For, instead of attending to his books, young Robert Clive used to go off on perilous adventures, and spent hours dreaming of exciting places all over the world that he would like to visit.

At the age of eighteen, Clive joined the East India Company and went out as a clerk to Madras where he hoped to make his fortune.

At that time, the French were at war with the English and in 1746 they attacked and captured Madras. Clive managed to escape and decided to become a soldier, a profession in which he was able to prove both his military and organisational abilities.

In 1751, British settlements were again threatened by an Indian ruler and his French allies. Clive counter-attacked and managed to capture the enemy capital, Arcot. Then, in a half-ruined fort with a force of only 500 Europeans and sepoys, (Indian soldiers), he held off an army of 7,000 for 53 days.

In 1753, Clive returned to England, having made a considerable fortune, and then returned to India as governor of Fort St. David near Madras. It was at this time that the Nawab of Bengal attacked and captured Calcutta. Clive set out with a relief expedition and rescued a group of European prisoners who had been shut up in a cramped, almost airless guardroom which was afterwards named ‘The Black Hole of Calcutta’. In 1757, Clive defeated the Nawab at the Battle of Plassey with a loss of only 23 men, and it was this victory which ensured British control of Bengal.

Clive returned to England, again acclaimed as a hero, and was created a baron.

Then, back in India, as governor of Bengal, he did his best to make the East India Company more efficient and to prevent its officials from accepting bribes. But when he returned home for the last time, Clive found his enemies accusing him of plundering and accepting bribes. Angered and bitter, the soldier said he was being treated more like a sheep-stealer than the founder of an empire. Such criticisms were too much for him to bear and on November 22nd, 1774, he ended his own life.

This edited article about King Harold originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

King Harold

Few people would have any doubts about the question posed by the title of this article. Harold unquestionably, they would say, died at the Battle of Hastings with an arrow in his eye.

Ah, but did he?

Let us re-live, for a little while, the last hours of that celebrated battle near the quiet Sussex seashore on October 14, 1066.

From nine o’clock in the morning of October 14 until three o’clock in the afternoon the fight had been an even one. The Normans pressed their attack with cavalry and each time the English, from behind their well placed barricades, repelled them. The Norman archers, who were achieving nothing with a frontal attack, altered their tactics and sent their arrows skywards, so they came down on the Englishmen’s heads.

The tactic was murderously effective, but the barricaded English line still held. Now the Normans resorted to a trick. They feigned a retreat with the intention of bringing the English out from behind their cover. The ruse worked: Harold’s men poured out after the fleeing Normans, who suddenly wheeled about and plunged back into the fight.

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